The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) was expanded to its full size at 4:10 p.m. EDT. Expansion was completed as the International Space Station flew over the south Pacific at an altitude of 252 miles. The NASA and Bigelow Aerospace teams working with NASA Astronaut Jeff Williams will now begin the final step to open eight tanks of air stored within the BEAM to pressurize the module. NASA Television coverage continues and can be seen at http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

NASA Astronaut Jeff Williams and the NASA and Bigelow Aerospace teams working at Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center spent more than seven hours on operations to fill the BEAM with air to cause it to expand.

Williams opened the valve 25 times today for a total time of 2 minutes and 27 seconds to add air to the module in short bursts as flight controllers carefully monitored the module’s internal pressure. Time in between bursts allowed the module to stabilize and expand.

From the beginning of operations at 9:04 a.m. EDT, the module added 61 inches in length to reach 67 inches beyond its packed configuration and an internal diameter of 127 inches. Its final length will be 158 inches, and its final diameter will be 127 inches.

BEAM is a technology demonstration from which we will learn more about how these types of habitats will perform in a microgravity environment. It will remain attached to station for a two-year test period.

This is the most detailed view of Pluto’s terrain you’ll see for a very long time. This mosaic strip – extending across the hemisphere that faced the New Horizons spacecraft as it flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015 – now includes all of the highest-resolution images taken by the NASA probe. (Be sure to zoom in for maximum detail.) With a resolution of about 260 feet (80 meters) per pixel, the mosaic affords New Horizons scientists and the public the best opportunity to examine the fine details of the various types of terrain on Pluto, and determine the processes that formed and shaped them.

“This new image product is just magnetic,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. “It makes me want to go back on another mission to Pluto and get high-resolution images like these across the entire surface.”

The view extends from the “limb” of Pluto at the top of the strip, almost to the “terminator” (or day/night line) in the southeast of the encounter hemisphere, seen below. The width of the strip ranges from more than 55 miles (90 kilometers) at its northern end to about 45 miles (75 kilometers) at its southern point. The perspective changes greatly along the strip: at its northern end, the view looks out horizontally across the surface, while at its southern end, the view looks straight down onto the surface.

This movie moves down the mosaic from top to bottom, offering new views of many of Pluto’s distinct landscapes along the way. Starting with hummocky, cratered uplands at top, the view crosses over parallel ridges of “washboard” terrain, chaotic and angular mountain ranges, cellular plains, coarsely “pitted” areas of sublimating nitrogen ice, zones of thin nitrogen ice draped over the topography below, and dark mountainous highlands scarred by deep pits.

The pictures in the mosaic were obtained by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) approximately 9,850 miles (15,850 kilometers) from Pluto, about 23 minutes before New Horizons’ closest approach.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has begun returning its best-ever views of the northern extremes of Saturn's icy, ocean-bearing moon Enceladus. The spacecraft obtained the images during its Oct. 14 flyby, passing 1,142 miles (1,839 kilometers) above the moon's surface. Mission controllers say the spacecraft will continue transmitting images and other data from the encounter for the next several days.

Scientists expected the north polar region of Enceladus to be heavily cratered, based on low-resolution images from the Voyager mission, but the new high-resolution Cassini images show a landscape of stark contrasts. "The northern regions are crisscrossed by a spidery network of gossamer-thin cracks that slice through the craters," said Paul Helfenstein, a member of the Cassini imaging team at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. "These thin cracks are ubiquitous on Enceladus, and now we see that they extend across the northern terrains as well."

In addition to the processed images, unprocessed, or "raw," images are posted on the Cassini mission website at:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/flybys/enceladus20151014

Cassini's next encounter with Enceladus is planned for Oct. 28, when the spacecraft will come within 30 miles (49 kilometers) of the moon's south polar region. During the encounter, Cassini will make its deepest-ever dive through the moon's plume of icy spray, sampling the chemistry of the extraterrestrial ocean beneath the ice. Mission scientists are hopeful data from that flyby will provide evidence of how much hydrothermal activity is occurring in the moon's ocean, along with more detailed insights about the ocean's chemistry -- both of which relate to the potential habitability of Enceladus.

Cassini's final close Enceladus flyby will take place on Dec. 19, when the spacecraft will measure the amount of heat coming from the moon's interior. The flyby will be at an altitude of 3,106 miles (4,999 kilometers).

Saturnian Snowman

NASA's Cassini spacecraft spied this tight trio of craters as it approached Saturn's icy moon Enceladus for a close flyby on Oct. 14, 2015.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Full image and caption

An online toolkit for all three final Enceladus flybys is available at:

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/finalflybys

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The Cassini imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

U.S. astronauts once again will travel to and from the International Space Station from the United States on American spacecraft under groundbreaking contracts NASA announced Tuesday. The agency unveiled its selection of Boeing and SpaceX to transport U.S. crews to and from the space station using their CST-100 and Crew Dragon spacecraft, respectively, with a goal of ending the nation’s sole reliance on Russia in 2017.

"From day one, the Obama Administration made clear that the greatest nation on Earth should not be dependent on other nations to get into space," NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "Thanks to the leadership of President Obama, the hard work of our NASA and industry teams, and support from Congress, today we are one step closer to launching our astronauts from U.S. soil on American spacecraft and ending the nation’s sole reliance on Russia by 2017. Turning over low-Earth orbit transportation to private industry will also allow NASA to focus on an even more ambitious mission – sending humans to Mars."

These Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts are designed to complete the NASA certification for human space transportation systems capable of carrying people into orbit. Once certification is complete, NASA plans to use these systems to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station and return them safely to Earth.

The contracts include at least one crewed flight test per company with at least one NASA astronaut aboard to verify the fully integrated rocket and spacecraft system can launch, maneuver in orbit, and dock to the space station, as well as validate all its systems perform as expected. Once each company’s test program has been completed successfully and its system achieves NASA certification, each contractor will conduct at least two, and as many as six, crewed missions to the space station. These spacecraft also will serve as a lifeboat for astronauts aboard the station.

NASA's Commercial Crew Program will implement this capability as a public-private partnership with the American aerospace companies. NASA's expert team of engineers and spaceflight specialists is facilitating and certifying the development work of industry partners to ensure new spacecraft are safe and reliable.

For more information about NASA's Commercial Crew Program and CCtCap, visit:

NASA's ISS-RapidScat mission will observe ocean wind speed and direction over most of the globe, bringing a new eye on tropical storms, hurricanes and typhoons. Here are five fast facts about the mission.

1. The space station looks homeward. ISS-RapidScat is the first scientific Earth-observing instrument specifically designed and developed to mount on the exterior of the International Space Station.

2. Microwaves in space. The ISS-RapidScat scatterometer is a type of radar that uses the same low-energy microwaves you use to warm up food. It bounces the microwaves off the ocean surface and analyzes the strength of the return signal to calculate wind speed and direction over the ocean.

3. Great sightlines, tight deadlines. The entire mission was built in a mere 18 months to catch a free ride on a scheduled International Space Station cargo resupply mission and take advantage of an available mounting location on the station. Most free-flying satellite missions require many years in development before launch.

4. Reduce, reuse, recycle. The ISS-RapidScat team adapted and reused hardware from the 1990s that was built to test the preceding NASA scatterometer instrument, QuikScat. Despite their advanced age, the components offer all the capacity the mission needs and passed every test. Using these components significantly reduced the mission’s overall cost.

5. A view that changes daily. Two other satellite instruments record ocean winds, but they are in sun-synchronous orbit, meaning that they cross the equator at the same times each day. The space station's orbit will take ISS-RapidScat across almost the entire globe between the Arctic and Antarctic circles at different times of the day. This will give scientists data they need to study how ocean winds grow and change throughout the day.

Flight Controllers at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Littleton, Colorado, will be responsible for the health and safety of the spacecraft throughout the process. The spacecraft’s mission timeline will place the spacecraft in orbit at approximately 9:50 p.m. EDT.

“So far, so good with the performance of the spacecraft and payloads on the cruise to Mars,” said David Mitchell, MAVEN project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The team, the flight system, and all ground assets are ready for Mars orbit insertion.”

The orbit-insertion maneuver will begin with the brief firing of six small thruster engines to steady the spacecraft. The engines will ignite and burn for 33 minutes to slow the craft, allowing it to be pulled into an elliptical orbit with a period of 35 hours.

Following orbit insertion, MAVEN will begin a six-week commissioning phase that includes maneuvering the spacecraft into its final orbit and testing its instruments and science-mapping commands. Thereafter, MAVEN will begin its one-Earth-year primary mission to take measurements of the composition, structure and escape of gases in Mars’ upper atmosphere and its interaction with the sun and solar wind.

“The MAVEN science mission focuses on answering questions about where did the water that was present on early Mars go, about where did the carbon dioxide go,” said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator from the University of Colorado, Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. “These are important questions for understanding the history of Mars, its climate, and its potential to support at least microbial life.”

MAVEN launched Nov. 18, 2013, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying three instrument packages. It is the first spacecraft dedicated to exploring the upper atmosphere of Mars. The mission’s combination of detailed measurements at specific points in Mars’ atmosphere and global imaging provides a powerful tool for understanding the properties of the Red Planet’s upper atmosphere.

“MAVEN is another NASA robotic scientific explorer that is paving the way for our journey to Mars,” said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Together, robotics and humans will pioneer the Red Planet and the solar system to help answer some of humanity’s fundamental questions about life beyond Earth.”

This red plane is a DHC-3 Otter, the plane flown in NASA's Operation IceBridge-Alaska surveys of mountain glaciers in Alaska.

Over the past few decades, average global temperatures have been on the rise, and this warming is happening two to three times faster in the Arctic. As the region’s summer comes to a close, NASA is hard at work studying how rising temperatures are affecting the Arctic.

NASA researchers this summer and fall are carrying out three Alaska-based airborne research campaigns aimed at measuring greenhouse gas concentrations near Earth’s surface, monitoring Alaskan glaciers, and collecting data on Arctic sea ice and clouds. Observations from these NASA campaigns will give researchers a better understanding of how the Arctic is responding to rising temperatures.

The Arctic Radiation – IceBridge Sea and Ice Experiment, or ARISE, is a new NASA airborne campaign to collect data on thinning sea ice and measure cloud and atmospheric properties in the Arctic. The campaign was designed to address questions about the relationship between retreating sea ice and the Arctic climate.

Late afternoon lighting produced a dramatic shadow of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity photographed by the rover's rear hazard-avoidance camera on March 20, 2014.

The shadow falls across a slope called the McClure-Beverlin Escarpment on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, where Opportunity is investigating rock layers for evidence about ancient environments. The scene includes a glimpse into the distance across the 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) crater.

The rover experienced a partial cleaning of dust from its solar panels by Martian wind this week, boosting electrical output from the array by about 10 percent, following a similar event last week. That is in addition to increased sunshine each day in the Martian southern hemisphere's early spring. Combined, the seasonal effect and multiple dust-cleaning events have increased the amount of energy available each day from the rover's solar array by more than 70 percent compared with two months ago, to more than 615 watt hours.

On March 23, 2004, when Opportunity had been working on Mars for only two months, scientists announced the mission's headline findings of evidence for water gently flowing across the surface of an area of Mars billions of years ago.

During Opportunity's first decade on Mars and the 2004-2010 career of its twin, Spirit, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project yielded a range of findings proving wet environmental conditions on ancient Mars -- some very acidic, others milder and more conducive to supporting life.

Harvard University researchers Fabien Paulot and Daniel Jacob used computer models including a NASA model of chemical reactions in the atmosphere to better represent how ammonia interacts in the atmosphere to form harmful particulate matter. The improved simulation helped the scientists narrow in on the estimated health costs from air pollution associated with food produced for export – a growing sector of agriculture and a source of trade surplus.

"The 'cost' is an economic concept to measure how much people are willing to pay to avoid a risk," Paulot said. "This is used to quantify the cost for society but also to evaluate the benefits of mitigation."

The new research by Paulot and Jacob calculate the health cost associated with the ammonia emissions from agriculture exports to be $36 billion a year – equal to about half of the revenue generated by those same exports – or $100 per kilogram of ammonia. The study was published December 2013 in Environmental Science & Technology.

The new estimate is about double the current estimate by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which suggests a cost of $47 per kilogram of ammonia. The scientists say the new estimate is on the high end of the spectrum, which reflects the need for more research into characterizing the relationship between agricultural ammonia emissions and the formation of the harmful fine particulate matter – a relationship that's not as straightforward as previous estimates assumed.

"The effect of ammonia on fine particulate is complex, and we believe that the models previously used in the United States to price ammonia emissions have not captured this well," Paulot said.

NASA research pilot Tom McMurtry advanced the throttle of the sleek
F-104 as it streaked across Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base,
barely a few hundred feet above the lakebed. With hundreds of employees
gathered atop the main administration building and the ramp area,
McMurtry piloted NASA 826 toward NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center,
with the airspeed indicator reading 450 knots.

That was the scenario on Feb. 3, 1994, 20 years ago this week at NASA
Dryden. After 1,415 flights, NASA 826, one of three F-104G aircraft
obtained by NASA from the German Luftwaffe in 1975, had flown its last.
It would soon be retired and placed on display outside the center than
had been its home for the preceding 19 years. It remains on exhibit
today.

McMurtry's final flyover in NASA 826, which was preceded by a
high-altitude pass at supersonic speed with a window-rattling sonic boom
followed by a low-level flyby at a fairly pedestrian – for an F-104 –
275 knots, brought to an end 38 years of service by 11 F-104s at NASA
Dryden. It was a fitting tribute.

"The sky cleared up just in time for F-104 826's last flight," reads
the anonymous entry in NASA Dryden's Flight Operations log for the date.
"Tom put on a beautiful show with a high, supersonic flyover, and two
low, high-speed passes over Bldg. 4800."

Originally designed by Kelly Johnson and his team at Lockheed's
"Skunk Works" as a day fighter/interceptor for the U.S. Air Force, the
F-104 Starfighters later found other uses as low-level, high-speed
fighter-bombers in the air forces of several nations. NASA acquired its
first F-104A from the Air Force in August 1956, and the versatile
high-performance aircraft soon proved to be ideal for both research,
mission support and pilot training, becoming the workhorses in NASA's
small stable of high-speed research aircraft.

Early on, a modified F-104 tested the reaction control thrusters for
the hypersonic X-15 rocket plane. The F-104's short wings and low
lift-to-drag ratio enabled it to simulate the X-15's landing profile,
which pilots often undertook in F-104s before X-15 flights to acquaint
them with the rocket plane's landing characteristics. This training role
continued with the lifting bodies. NASA's F-104s were also used for
high-speed research after the X-1E was retired. Lockheed built three of
the aircraft specifically for NASA's requirements, and they were given
the F-104N designation.

Two of NASA's F-104s were lost in crashes, including one that cost
the life of the center's chief pilot Joseph Walker, following a mid-air
collision with an XB-70 in 1966.NASA 826, officially registered as N826NA, accomplished a wide-range
of research activities, including tests of the Space Shuttle's Thermal
Protection System tiles during its 19 years at the center. But its days
were numbered.

Difficulty in maintaining and obtaining parts for the aging F-104
fleet led NASA to make the decision to retire the last of the aircraft
in favor of newer, more maneuverable F-18s and F/A-18s, early models of
which had become available from the Navy's test fleet. Over the course
of almost 38 years, from August 1956 through February 1994, the 11
F-104s flown by NASA had accumulated over 18,000 flights at NASA Dryden
in a great variety of missions ranging from basic research to airborne
simulation and service as an aerodynamic test bed.

NASA's Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes have spotted what might be
one of the most distant galaxies known, harkening back to a time when
our universe was only about 650 million years old (our universe is 13.8
billion years old). The galaxy, known as Abell2744 Y1, is about 30 times
smaller than our Milky Way galaxy and is producing about 10 times more
stars, as is typical for galaxies in our young universe.

The discovery comes from the Frontier Fields program, which is
pushing the limits of how far back we can see into the distant universe
using NASA's multi-wavelength suite of Great Observatories. Spitzer sees
infrared light, Hubble sees visible and shorter-wavelength infrared
light, and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory sees X-rays. The telescopes
are getting a boost from natural lenses: they peer through clusters of
galaxies, where gravity magnifies the light of more distant galaxies.

The Frontier Fields program will image six galaxy clusters in total.
Hubble images of the region are used to spot candidate distant galaxies,
and then Spitzer is needed to determine if the galaxies are, in fact,
as far as they seem. Spitzer data also help determine how many stars are
in the galaxy.

These early results from the program come from images of the Abell
2744 galaxy cluster. The distance to this galaxy, if confirmed, would
make it one of the farthest known. Astronomers say it has a redshift of
8, which is a measure of the degree to which its light has been shifted
to redder wavelengths due to the expansion of our universe. The farther a
galaxy, the higher the redshift. The farthest confirmed galaxy has a
redshift of more than 7. Other candidates have been identified with
redshifts as high as 11.

"Just a handful of galaxies at these great distances are known," said
Jason Surace, of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "The Frontier Fields program is
already working to find more of these distant, faint galaxies. This is a
preview of what's to come."

The findings, led by astronomers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de
Canarias and La Laguna University, are accepted for publication in the
scientific journal Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters.

The cold of an Icelandic winter did not stop one NASA science
aircraft from completing a mission to map glaciers on the island during
the past week. NASA's C-20A, based at the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in
Palmdale, Calif., flew four radar missions from Keflavik International
Airport near Reykjavik, Iceland.

The aircraft carries a precision NASA synthetic aperture radar,
developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., that
uses a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR)
to detect and measure very subtle deformations in Earth's surface.

A
ground crewman at Keflavik International Airport sprays de-icing fluid
on NASA's C-20A research aircraft prior to takeoff on a radar imaging
mission over Iceland's glaciers. The aircraft was parked outside
overnight in sub-freezing temperatures, requiring de-icing each morning.

The Icelandic mission is designed to study how movement of the
glaciers in winter differs from their movement in summer when there is
considerable meltwater that reaches the bed of the glacier, according to
principal investigator Mark Simons, a professor of geophysics at the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "This study will help scientists better understand the basic
processes that control the fate of glaciers as climate changes. In so
doing, this study contributes to our understanding of glacier behavior
world wide and will aid in improving our estimates of rising sea
levels," said Simons.

"We all recognize that the techniques being developed in this project
both observationally and in terms of modeling should have significant
impact on studies of the cryosphere around the globe, as well as on our
planning for a future U.S. L-band radar satellite," he added.

The Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) is
installed in a specialized pod mounted on the belly of NASA's aircraft.
Each of the four flights, totaling more than 26 hours, was flown over
the same path as a summer 2012 study of surface ice on glaciers.

Prior to the first science mission being flown Jan. 31, the C-20A had
to be de-iced after being parked outside overnight due to lack of
hangar space. When the crew arrived to prepare for flight, the "aircraft
looked remarkably like a glazed donut," quipped NASA C-20A project
manager John McGrath.

The C-20A, which is a military version of the civilian Gulfstream III
business aircraft, and its specialized equipment arrived back in the
U.S. Feb. 6.

Focusing on the future was the dominant theme of a busy year for NASA's aeronautical innovators during 2013.

A new strategic vision that will guide the agency's aviation research
efforts now and into the future was adopted even as world class
research continued at NASA centers across the nation to make air travel
ever more efficient and environmentally friendly.

"This has been a truly incredible year for us as our entire team
continued making exciting technical advances that show great promise for
positively impacting our nation’s economy and job growth," said Jaiwon
Shin, NASA's associate administrator for aeronautics.

"The future of aviation in this country is going to be even more
remarkable thanks to the plans made and work we accomplished during
2013," Shin said.

Here are highlights of what NASA Aeronautics has done during the past year to improve aviation.

Based on a fresh look at the future of aviation – as well as global
trends in technology, the environment and economics – NASA Aeronautics
chartered a new strategic vision for its aviation research programs.

The updated vision is designed to ensure that, through NASA's
aeronautics research, the United States will maintain its leadership in
the sky, and sustain aviation so that it remains a key economic driver
and cultural touchstone for the nation.

What this means for the flying public is that NASA's contributions to
aviation will be even more relevant as ongoing research leads to new
aircraft, improved mobility and safety, less impact on the environment,
and an all-around better experience in the sky.

More Efficient Highways in the Sky

NASA is working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and
others to modernize the nation's air traffic control system with the
help of new technology, software and procedures – an effort known as
NextGen.

The technology behind one such tool, which was transferred to the FAA
during 2013, is intended to help controllers determine the best time to
release an airliner from its gate so it can taxi, takeoff and join a
specific slot in the traffic flow overhead.

Known as the Precision Departure Release Capability, it is intended
to work with other traffic management tools and will help controllers
react more quickly when conditions change because of weather or other
problems.

NASA's Physical Science Research Program will fund seven proposals,
including one from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.,
to conduct physics research using the agency's new microgravity
laboratory, which is scheduled to launch to the International Space
Station in 2016.

NASA's Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) will provide an opportunity to
study ultra-cold quantum gases in the microgravity environment of the
space station -- a frontier in scientific research that is expected to
reveal interesting and novel quantum phenomena.

This environment makes it possible to conduct research in a way
unachievable on Earth because atoms can be observed over a longer
period, and mixtures of different atoms can be studied free of the
effects of gravity, where cold atoms can be trapped more easily by
magnetic fields.

The chosen proposals came from seven research teams, which include
three Nobel laureates, in response to NASA's research announcement
"Research Opportunities in Fundamental Physics." The proposals will
receive a total of about $12.7 million over a four- to five-year period.
Development of selected experiments will begin immediately.

Five of the selected proposals will involve flight experiments using
CAL aboard the space station, following ground-based research activities
to prepare the experiments for flight. Two of the selected proposals
call for ground-based research to help NASA plan for future flight
experiments. The Cold Atom Laboratory project office is at JPL, which is
developing the instrument in-house. CAL is a joint partnership of JPL,
NASA's International Space Station Program Office at the Johnson Space
Center in Houston, and the Space Life and Physical Sciences Branch at
NASA Headquarters.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover reached the edge of a dune on Jan. 30 and
photographed the valley on the other side, to aid assessment of whether
to cross the dune.

Curiosity is on a southwestward traverse of many months from an area
where it found evidence of ancient conditions favorable for microbial
life to its long-term science destination on the lower slopes of Mount
Sharp. Based on analysis of images taken from orbit by NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter, a location dubbed "Dingo Gap" was assessed as a
possible gateway to a favorable route for the next portion of the
traverse.

A dune across Dingo Gap is about 3 feet (1 meter) high, tapered off
at both sides of the gap between two low scarps. Curiosity reached the
eastern side of the dune on Jan. 30 and returned images that the rover
team is using to guide decisions about upcoming drives.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess
ancient habitable environments and major changes in Martian
environmental conditions. JPL, a division of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena, built the rover and manages the project for
NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.